A doll of former US President Bill Clinton for sale at the Clinton Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. Photograph: Jeff Mitchell/Reuters

Let's get this out of the way: there is no sign of Monica Lewinsky's blue dress in Bill Clinton's personal monument to his immortality, a cantilevered span of steel and glass that houses the physical remains of his presidency.

But the William J Clinton presidential centre, which opens today, is none the less a living mausoleum to America in the 1990s, redolent of the achievement, glitz and tawdry scandals that will endow his legacy.

Mr Clinton is the 12th American leader to consign his presidential papers, and the flotsam of his political career, to history. But as might be expected from an opening marked by a week of revelry, Mr Clinton's ideas of posterity have been realised on a far grander scale.

Today's opening event, to be attended by President Bush, and past presidents Bush and Carter, has attracted a roster of stars and Democratic party luminaries and will feature performances by Bono and U2. About 27,000 people, more than the population of most Arkansas towns, are expected to attend. A 757 packed full of celebrities arrived from Hollywood. By lunchtime yesterday, the average time on line for the museum shop for Bill Clinton dolls and jean jackets was half an hour, with the wait enlivened by a protester wearing a placard reading: "Hillary dump him, that evil trash."

But it's a bitter-sweet moment for Mr Clinton, and for the thousands of his admirers who descended on Little Rock this week to try to conjure up those years of the 1990s, when America's economy was roaring, its political obsessions frivolous, and a Democrat was in the White House.

Less than two months after emerging from open heart surgery, Mr Clinton was being called upon to think once more about mortality - and the painful truth that his best days are behind him. "The great thing about a man in my position is I can say exactly what I think," he told the local chamber of commerce on Tuesday. "But the bad thing is nobody's listening because I don't have any power any more."

Most architectural critics have conceded the building, which was designed by New York architect James Polshek, is breathtaking. But at $165m, the cost of housing the Clinton legacy is twice as expensive as the repository for George HW Bush's presidential papers in Texas. Then again Mr Clinton leaves a far fuller record of his presidency than any other leader. His eight-year stay at the White House generated 80m pieces of paper, 21m electronic documents, 2m photographs and 79,000 objects, some of which could most kindly be described as kitsch.

Mr Clinton's hand is ever-present - "curator-in-chief", the exhibit's designer, Ralph Applebaum, said yesterday. The former president edited the text in the display cases and, only hours before the opening, was tinkering with the medals in the Oval Office.

The life-size replica of the Oval Office, as furnished by the Clintons, is the jewel of the museum. It has a moon rock on the coffee table and, curiously for a man derided by the right as a draft dodger, two display cases of military medals.

The substance of the presidency is on display in a mock cabinet room with interactive displays allowing visitors to review the history of the Balkans before seeing how the decision was made for military intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

But Mr Clinton's not-so-secret weakness for glitz is also there, from the gushing celebrity thank you notes - Whoopi Goldberg wrote: "I think you're the cat's pyjamas"; Mr Clinton replied: "From the moment I met you I felt I had found a friend" - to the sunglasses he wore playing his saxophone on a late-night TV show.

The spine of the museum is a 110ft timeline of Mr Clinton's eight years in the White House, using photographs and videos to chart the highlights of his presidency, as well as events in the world. A row of blue binders below contains Mr Clinton's daily schedules, beginning from his first day as president on January 21 1993, with an 8.40am CIA briefing.

Fourteen alcoves on either side of the timeline focus on the achievements and pre-occupations of those years - from the upward slope of red lights delineating the economic prosperity of the 90s to the most tawdry chapter of his life, the 1998 impeachment scandal arising from Mr Clinton's affair with Ms Lewinsky.

That section is entitled The Fight for Power, and eight years of reflection do not appear to have diminished Mr Clinton's rancour about the controversy.

Sections of the text, marked out in yellow highlighter, provide a glimpse at Mr Clinton's thoughts about the scandals of his second term. "Character assassination", "rumours and accusations", "politics of persecution", and a broadside against the independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, for overstepping his brief.

Mr Applebaum deflected charges that he had tried to absolve Mr Clinton by blaming the controversy and a power-mad Republican Congress. "What we tried to show was that this episode was embedded in a very rich and very complicated, and very full-blown activity of the presidency," he said. In the end, how ever, even the exhibit could not shirk the cold hard truth. "In September 1998, President Clinton acknowledged that he had not been forthcoming about the relationship," the section reads.

Mr Clinton has also been generous with personal memorabilia, from a drawing he did as a six-year-old of the shoot-out in the movie High Noon to his cub scout membership card, and Chelsea Clinton's baby book and pink ballet slippers.

Barely 8% of the material is on display in the main exhibition centre. The rest is consigned to an archive building partly sunk into the ground where it is estimated it will take scholars 50 years to sift through the physical remains of the Clinton presidency.

An old railroad station houses the Clinton school of public service, and when the landscaping is complete next spring, the 27-acre park on the south bank of the Arkansas river will be adorned with walking trails and barbecue pits.

The state's tourism department expects 300,000 visitors a year. Mr Clinton could also be on view: he has an apartment in the complex.

The power and the story: highlights of the library

· Replica of the Oval Office, as it appeared when Clinton was president, including the desk which John Kennedy also used, a Norman Rockwell painting of the Statue of Liberty given to him by Steven Spielberg, and a piece of moon rock that Clinton kept on a coffee table

· Replica of the cabinet room, with brass nameplates on each leather chair, and interactive exhibit showing how decisions were made, for example on bombing Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999, and welfare reform

· The black presidential limousine in which Clinton was driven to the 1993 inauguration

· Clinton's personal collection of political buttons from the 1992 and 1996 campaigns

· Five saxophones, golf clubs, copies of family photos from the White House

· First grade report card for Billy Blythe [his surname before his mother's remarriage], cub scout membership card, and a drawing on orange paper of the film High Noon

· Page from the Good Friday agreement in 1998 with Clinton's handwritten changes

· Celebrity thank you notes, including one from Whoopi Goldberg, who wrote: "I think you're the cat's pajamas" - and Clinton's reply, which says: "From the moment I met you I felt I had found a friend"

· Row of blue binders containing Clinton's daily schedules dating from his first meeting as president - an 8.40am briefing from the CIA on January 21 1993